


We Could Turn the World to Gold (Supercorp Edition)

by KL_Morgan



Series: turn the world to gold [2]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, Tumblr Prompt, every chapter a different fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:40:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21842326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KL_Morgan/pseuds/KL_Morgan
Summary: ficlets from tumblr according to the prompt: send me an AU and I'll write five headcanons for itTHIS UPDATE: Harry Potter AU“You’re an alienanda wizard?” asks a girl wearing a brand new Ravenclaw scarf. “Isn’t that cheating?”Alex steps forward. Most people know that’s going to happen if you bring up Kara’s extra-terrestrial ancestry, and that’s exactly why they don’t do it.  “Is there a problem?”Which is never a real question when asked by someone in Slytherin colors.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Series: turn the world to gold [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1324763
Comments: 132
Kudos: 427





	1. a note on the stories

Like the summary says: these are posted in response to AU prompts I asked for and received on tumblr. (Currently closed to prompts.) I soon realized I'm kinda crap at writing headcanons and five-part ficlets were more appealing. 

I don't often do non-canon AUs -- or shorter stories -- so these fics were an attempt to experiment and push myself. Which also means these can be a lot fluffier than my usual stuff... or much darker. Content warnings will be posted at the top of any stories that warrant them (though currently I doubt any will). Beyond that, please consider yourself warned.

_hold on to me I_

_never want to let you go_

_(run away with me, run away with me)_

_over the weekend_

_we could turn the world to gold_


	2. Lena Is Green Lantern AU

**1.** “Oh, no,” Lena says, when the lantern finishes explaining. “ _No._ I am a _scientist_. I cannot, _will not_ inextricably link myself to anything involving magic. I don’t care if I was chosen: I choose my path in this life, and I am not putting on that damn ring. And then – you want me to say what?” 

*

“Does it _have_ to rhyme?”

*

It’s a rush. 

It’s like balancing an equation after an all-nighter on nothing but takeout and too-caffeinated soda. It’s like the look on some hoary relic’s face the moment he realizes she actually knows what she’s doing when she walks into the boardroom. It’s like…

No, there are no analogies. Nothing in the world is like this, simply reaching out and seeing her will manifest itself on the world in shining, verdant power. 

She might even say there’s nothing better, but the look on Supergirl’s face when Lena flew out into the eye of the storm to help her drag a 747 out of its grip – nothing will ever top _that_. 

**2**. The first thing she does is tell the whole world. 

“I am the Green Lantern,” she says and the world explodes into light as the flashes go off over, and over, and over. 

*

“Are you _crazy_ ,” Supergirl shouts at her the next time they meet. She needs to shout: the… whatever they’re fighting is attacking them with sonic waves, and whenever the silvery figure darts to another vantage point the resulting boom is almost deafening. “The whole point is that no one knows who you are! That’s why the suit comes with a _mask_!”

“Yeah, well, then you should have considered one,” Lena murmurs, dodging the air ripple that’s their only warning of another onslaught.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Supergirl bellows from the other side of a high rise. 

Oh. Superhearing. Right. 

“It _means_ ,” flinging out her power, “that glasses and a ponytail are a great misdirect, but they don’t actually obstruct drawn conclusions!”

The city around them goes silent. 

Warily, they both fly out from their hiding places. The attacker is struggling to get out from under a glowing green blanket. Lena pinches the edges shut.

“What did you do?”

“Acoustic invisibility cloak,” Lena says. “I’ve seen schematics of the material from Duke, I just had to remember the details of its construction.” 

“Can I punch him through it?”

“Go for it.” 

Supergirl takes a moment to steel herself, but it’s an effective knock-out technique. Their attacker goes still, and Lena takes back Green Lantern’s power. 

“This isn’t the kind of world where secrets last,” Lena tells her, since Supergirl seems ready to let the subject drop – Lena isn’t. “Millions of cameras and phones recording our image, day after day, and someone who already had a public profile as high as mine… Someone was going to figure out my identity sooner or later. I figured if I got out in front of it, I could keep it from being used against me.”

“Is that what you’re going to do now? With me?” 

Lena sucks in a breath. “I don’t deserve that,” she says quietly.

“I know,” Supergirl says, to Lena’s surprise. “But I had to ask.”

“Did you, though?”

“Yes,” and Lena kind of hates herself for how she still finds the stubbornness of Supergirl’s slight pout so attractive. “This impacts more people than just me.” 

Alex. James. Winn. Mentally, Lena runs through the list of suspects: people Kara trusted with her secret before even considering the last Luthor heir. 

But then Kara says, “There’s, well, there’s kind of this club,” and surprises her for a second time in quick succession. 

*

“What’s your benefits package?” she asks when they invite her to join the Justice League.

**3** . “What do you mean, you don’t have benefits? What about workers comp? Insurance? You fight crime in elaborate home costumes; you’re telling me you don’t have a _behavioral health plan_?” 

They explain it to her – “them” being the usual suspects of Batman, Superman, that red-suited kid from Central City who inspires all the really _filthy_ metahuman jokes at cocktail parties, plus the Robin Hood wannabe from Starling City. Technically he came first, which means _she_ stole _his_ color scheme, but she gets her superhero getup from an ages-old pan-dimensional… magic thingy. She’s pretty sure she can pull rank. 

Kara lurks on the edges, watching Lena’s face like she knows what’s coming.

“So you have no legal protections in place,” Lena says after they’re done. “Any resulting property damage you settle out of court. And I guess, what, you’re counting on the fact you’re nice people to keep any bystanders from suing for resulting harm or battery?”

“We’re superheroes,” the hooded one says, sounding exasperated.

“You’re idiots,” Lena snarls, and flies off.

Then she turns around and flies back.

“The others I can understand. But this is exactly why OSHA took your ass to court in ‘09, Bruce; you know better.” 

**4**. Lena forms her own league.

“Just tell me it’s not for supervillains,” Supergirl says, rubbing at her temples.

“Oh, right – I’m just going to go out and form a _league of evil_ under my own name. That’s partly why secret identities are primed to backfire, you know.” 

Supergirl scowls. “So this is about –”

“It’s not.” Lena motions, inviting her to sit down – she’s had tea and coffee brought onto her balcony in preparation for this visit. “Maybe it’d be more fun if I was gearing up for some kind of resentment-fueled showdown, but this really does have more to do with dental.”

“Dental?” reaching for a cheese danish. 

“Mmhmm. Not every alien or metahuman with gifts that could benefit National City works for an organisation that knows what they are, or would accept it if they did. And,” as Supergirl opens her mouth, “L-Corp offers a very competitive benefits package for the employees of its subsidiaries. As you know.” 

Supergirl munches thoughtfully. “I thought you’d be angrier.”

“… so did I.” Events after her press conference had been… eye-opening. She’d thought she’d seen how ruthless, how inventive, the tabloids could be: turns out she had no idea.

Not to mention, of course, the death threats, the _new_ stalkers, and just the overwhelming energy of the crowds whenever she walks the streets. Even when it’s friendly, it can border on fanaticism.

She wouldn’t wish any of it on Kara, living _as_ Kara, for a second. 

“You have a right to be,” the alien said, looking at her with big doe eyes. Earnestness and good will might as well be wafting out her pores and into the air. It might actually be. Lena wonders if they’ve reached a place where she can ask to run tests. “I’d understand if you were.”

Of course she would. She runs around saving the world in her free time, no expectations in turn, just because she _can_. Of course she’d bend her head and take whatever abuse Lena chose to heap on her for the crime of trying to keep her friends and family out of the direct line of fire with a few secrets. 

“Have you seen all this paperwork I have to deal with?” Lena says, waving a sheath of applications to her league – more of a union, really – in Kara’s direction. “I don’t have time to be angry.”

Supergirl’s hesitant, slow-growing smile actually makes that true. 

**5.** The first time she tries to kiss Kara, the Super flinches out of reach.

Lena jerks back. It’s amazing how far momentum – horrified, humiliated momentum – can carry you when hovering in the air. She has to stop herself, and even fly in a little closer, even as it makes her skin itch. But she doesn’t want to be seen running away. 

“Sorry,” she says, once she’s in… well, Kara could have heard her on the other side of the world, maybe. But this way their conversation won’t travel any further than the two of them. Or, she’s pretty sure – they’re a good fifty feet up above the battlefield, where the smoking remnants of Zod’s army is being picked over by both the League and the Union. (The Union of Mercy. Lena trademarked it.) But she’s not sure who else from her camp has augmented hearing. “I – I read the moment wrong. What you said, about last chances… no, I’m sorry. This is my fault.”

“No, it’s not.” Kara says, muffled from both of her hands covering her face. “You didn’t – it’s just that you’re…”

Lena waits for it: _Luthor/untrustworthy/female/human/brunette_.

“… um, green.”

Lena blinks. “You’re rejecting me because I’m –”

Supergirl jerks her head up and out of her hands. “I’m not rejecting you,” she mumbles, “you just caught me by surprise, and you’re green! And glowing! It’s the exact same hue as –” She blushes at the look on Lena’s face. “It was a knee-jerk reaction!” 

Lena considers letting her feelings be hurt, but the expression Kara wears is just so crestfallen. “So, I startled you.”

“ _Yes_.” Supergirl folds her arms, fidgeting. 

“Okay.” They hover together in the air, silently. “If I try again, do you want a warning? Or, we can land – I’ll still have the ring on, but the rest of me –”

“No,” Supergirl says, right up against her mouth and oh, superspeed. Right. 

Kara kisses her – softly, and then with growing confidence. (Possibly because she’s learning Lena. Possibly because of the reassurance that Green Lantern’s power only resembles kryptonite in the superficial.) She wraps her arms around Lena, holds her tighter and tighter, until Lena isn’t sure whose power is keeping her aloft. 

A few whoops and some scattered applause breaks out below – Union people, since the League did all the heavy lifting and are mostly too exhausted to care. Lena yells down to remind them all they’re on the clock. Kara smiles into her hair. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this is a re-upload because I realized if I'm pretty much only getting prompted for two pairings, they should have separate fics. Huge, huge apologies to anyone who left me a comment that got deleted -- I am sorry I didn't get my stuff together in time to prevent that. But please know I have copies of every comment and I treasure them like the praise fiend I am.


	3. Harry Potter AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Hey, so whatever happened to those tumblr-prompt stories?”
> 
> Yeah by the by have I ever mentioned my near-inability to tell a story in under 10K. I honestly don’t know how many more of these I’ll post, taking that into account, but I do love these characters, so... we’ll see!
> 
> Re: thestrals, I’m very possibly fudging the essentials, but I’m going on the idea Kara can see them because she witnessed the death of Krypton from her pod.
> 
> re: all other mistakes? my own. if you catch any I'd appreciate it.

**1.** “You’re an alien _and_ a wizard?” asks a girl wearing a brand new Ravenclaw scarf. “Isn’t that cheating?”

Alex steps forward. Most people know that’s going to happen if you bring up Kara’s extra-terrestrial ancestry, and that’s exactly why they don’t do it. “Is there a problem?” 

Which is never a real question when asked by someone in Slytherin colors. 

“What?” The girl frowns. “No, I just…” She gives a small shrug. She notices the attention they’re getting as everyone in earshot turns to look. 

(As a fourth year Alex punched the nose of a seventh year Durmstrang student for asking if Kara was part of Hagrid’s famed menagerie. She hit him so hard he sat down on the floor, crying, and refused to get up until Headmaster Krum came out of conferencing with Headmistress McGonagall and personally escorted the boy on an early boat home. Everyone who hadn’t witnessed it themselves was still bitter about the fact.) 

Stiffening, the girl tosses her long dark hair over her shoulder. “Asking questions is the basis of all knowledge. Not that I expect _you_ to know.”

Alex’s lips curl away from her teeth, and Kara puts a hand on her back. Alex fighting Kara’s battles for her was something of a compromise. Kara refused to deliberately raise a hand to anyone knowing just how much damage she could do, but Alex insisted that as long as _no one_ did, she had a weakness too obvious to go unexploited. 

Except this isn’t someone with ten inches and fifty pounds (nope, back in Scotland, she has to remember to use metric) on Alex, who, really, is going to graduate this year and should be on her best behavior until then. Kara pinches her sister’s sweater and gives it a tug. _Not this one_.

“You’re going to be lost without me next year,” Alex informs her later during their bi-weekly “study” session in the library, which they mostly use as an excuse to hang out. Different years, different classes, but they often switch off to eat together at each other’s House tables. (Alex insists the pumpkin juice is fresher at Hufflepuff’s.) But that’s among mutual friends, and as good as it feels to be praised by teachers for fostering the best Slytherin/Hufflepuff relations since before the first Wizarding War, it’s nice to grab time with just the two of them. “I know your whole deal about fighting, but you can’t let people push you around like that.”

“Okay,” Kara says, and switches the subject. 

She loves Alex, and she’s going to miss her. But the girl that afternoon – darn, Kara didn’t even get her name – wasn’t looking for a fight. Not until Alex tried to make it one. _That’s_ when her expression had hardened into something defensive, and she’d made herself ready for attack.

Before that… she hadn’t sounded derisive, despite the words she used. Kara isn’t sure what that was about. _But_ , she thinks as she pages through a musty spellbook, relaxing into the familiar smells and sounds of her second home, _I really wish I could find out_. 

**2.** Her name is Lena and she’s a recent transfer from Beauxbatons, which explains how she could be another fifth year without Kara ever seeing her before. And her French-y tendency to shrug when words fail her. 

She’s also a Luthor, which explains why she’s getting her wizarding education in Europe. When your brother attempts to become an American dark lord by using Ilvermorny as a recruitment center, and is only found out in his third year of teaching Dark Arts because of the particularly gruesome death of a student, it makes sense for your family to send you abroad. 

Exploded homeworld aside, Alex and Kara’s reasons for being in Britain aren’t as sensational. DEO screening is _thorough_ – genetic diseases, intelligence testing, and magical ability. With the remnants of Luthor’s xenophobic cult still lurking in the shadows of Ilvermorny, European schools were suggested as an alternative – and as soon as Alex met her first Unspeakable, it was all over. Her transfer probably went through before they got Kara’s acceptance letters. (Which had been piling up at the Post – even magical owls have trouble translating Kryptonian.) 

But Kara likes Hogwarts. She likes the flavor of the air above Scotland where the atmosphere thins out, she likes the way Alex’s face lights up when she hits a bludger just right, and she _really_ likes whatever magic is behind the feast table. She does fine with friends, and would even if Alex weren’t ready to throw down with anyone who might care to differ. Most students think an alien is the coolest thing to happen to wizarding Britain since the Harpies came back with the Cup. It helps, maybe, that she’s in Hufflepuff – a pleased murmur went through the Hall when the hat shouted out her sorting, and from day one her housemates have refused to be awed by her in the slightest. 

Really, the only fly in the ointment is the figure who sits slightly apart from her House as mealtimes, dark head bent over a textbook. There’s enough space on the benches around her to account for an invisibility shield – which, surprise, turns out Kara can see through – except Kara knows they aren’t taught that spell in fifth year. 

**3.** Kara is escorting a fellow Hufflepuff to the infirmary after accidentally breaking their foot during a Quidditch game – she can’t imagine living among humans without Skele-Gro or healing spells, they’re so _delicate_ – when they pass the Potions classroom and she spots Lena inside.

She drops off her casualty as quickly as possible, which is harder than it sounds, because Madam Pomfrey is one of her favorite people and she’s already helping Kara with an application to intern at at St Mungo’s the summer after sixth year. She apologizes for the broken bones, again, and gives Pomfrey a quick hug (”You know you’re the only person who can do that and live, right?” Alex asked her once. Kara protested: “She’s a marshmallow.” “She killed a _Death Eater_.”) before eeling out the door and back down the halls. 

She’s sneaky at first, peering around the door to watch Lena without being noticed. The other girl has her hair drawn back and a pair of safety goggles firmly in place as she measures out her ingredients. There was a chorus of giggles when she first produced them in class.

“I can promise you, we’re more than equipped to deal with whatever injuries might occur,” Professor Patil assured her with a smile. 

“Maybe,” Lena replied. “But that’s no reason to neglect basic safety precautions.” Kara found herself nodding, although she didn’t think anyone else saw it. 

She doesn’t think the other girl can see her now, except then she says “If you’re going to come in, come in,” and Kara jumps. Lena doesn’t bother to turn her head. “If you’re going to run and tell on me, just know this spell will become combustible in the next seven minutes, so that’s your window.” 

“I’m not going to tell on you,” stepping into the classroom. “Why do you think I’d do that?”

“Isn’t that what Puffle-huffers do?”

Kara straightens as if goosed. “Um, _no_.” Well, not most of them. “It’s Hufflepuff, by the way.”

“Whatever.”

“No, you should know that, because we’re the cool house.”

This, finally, gets the other girl to look away from her bubbling potion. Albeit with a slight frown. “But I thought --” She snaps her mouth shut, as if just realizing how rude she was about to be. 

The fact she didn’t finish that thought, Kara decides, is a good sign. “You heard we were the boring leftovers, huh.”

Lena shifts in her seat but doesn’t say anything.

“Hey, I’m not offended. We love it when people say that. It keeps the worst of them away from our parties.” 

That gets her the smallest of smiles -- too small to excuse Kara’s resulting giddiness, like she’d caught the tail end of a cheering charm. “Serves me right for assuming,” Lena offers. “The House thing is... an adjustment. Who divides up a student body according Hippocrates’s humors, anyway?”

“The same people who founded a wizarding school in the remotest part of Scotland.”

That got her a slightly bigger smile, and the hint of warmth in the other girl’s eyes. “It’s different.”

“From Beauxbatons?”

“We were a lot less... collegiate.” She frowns down at her Ravenclaw tie, smoothing the edges beneath her wizard’s robes. “We had scholars and artists in residence, and visiting political figures. It was less a school, more a... a place where important things happened, and also classes.” 

“If you miss it so much, why’d you transfer?”

“I didn’t say I missed it,” Lena says, distracted as her potion begins to bubble. “I miss the uniforms, definitely. Be quiet for a minute.”

Kara leans back amiably against another table, watching as Lena stirs, checks, adds more of something. The bubbling reduces to a simmer as the liquid turns a sheer, quartz-like pink. Kara can almost hear it hum.

“What _is_ that,” Kara asks, deciding after Lena stares at it for a long moment that whatever she was creating, it must be finished.

“Scientiserum. It’s kind of like Veritaserum turned inside-out. It lets you know if someone is telling the truth.” 

“ _Veritaserum_?" Kara blurts out, watching Lena coax the concoction into small, stoppered bottles with her wand. “That’s N.E.W.T.-level!”

“Scientiserum is easier.” Lena’s left shoulder hitches. “Kind of easier.” 

“Wow.” Kara doesn’t _mean_ to stand around like an idiot with her mouth open, but, like... “You’re really good at Potions.”

The other girl’s hands tighten on two of the containers. “I enjoy it. I don’t enjoy most magic. I learn it because it would be stupid not to. I liked science, and chemistry, before I was summoned to wizarding school,” looking down at her hands. “This is the closest equivalent I could find.” 

The next thing Kara knows, Lena is thrusting out a vial of pink, slightly shimmering liquid under her nose. “Here.”

“Uh, thanks?” as she takes it from the other girl. “But what am I supposed to do with -- uh,” blinking as she watches Lena tip the contents of another vial into her mouth in a series of swallows.

“Now you know there’s nothing wrong with it,” Lena says, and motions. “Go on. Drink.”

She really shouldn’t. She can already hear Alex yelling at her. 

But Lena looks expectant -- invested, even, unlike the careful air of detachment she’s cultivated so thoroughly this year. Kara finds that the last thing in the world she wants to do is leave her disappointed.

The potion goes down in a rush a bubbles and the faintest aftertaste of ice water, and wild strawberries. 

“Ask me again,” Lena says when Kara lowers the vial.

Kara chases the taste of the potion for another moment before the memory clicks in. “Why did you transfer?”

Lena draws in a deep breath. “Because my mother wanted me to. And I couldn’t find a reason to put her off any longer.” 

The air around Lena glimmers -- a soft, rosy cloud. The potion works.

“Okay.” That expectant air, again. Kara fumbles for the natural progression of: “Why does you mother want you to attend Hogwarts?”

“Because you do.”

The pinkish cloud doesn’t waver. It’s a surreal visual counterpoint to the sudden coldness in the pit of Kara’s stomach.

“She doesn’t know what you are, or even who you are, really,” Lena continues. “Not yet. But she kept hearing rumors about a student here who is. Interesting.” She gives another one of those shrugs that seem like they should communicate more than what Kara can pick up on. “So she had me transfer.”

Kara swallows past a dry mouth. “Why would your mom care if--”

“You heard about my brother?” She waits for Kara’s nod. “The megalomaniacal apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I’m not sure how she wants to use you or what you can do in her favor. But if there’s a way to repair her standing in the wizarding world, my mother will find it.”

“Oh.” Her mouth asks without checking for her brain’s permission: “Is that why you don’t like magic?”

Lena doesn’t answer for a long moment, and Kara wonders how much she’s regretting sacrificing privacy for the sake of transparency. Kara is just about to take the question back -- she’s opening her mouth to do it -- when Lena answers:

“My father wasn’t a wizard. He died a long time ago, and he never knew my mother was. _I_ didn’t know, until my letter arrived. Even when my brother was away at school, my mother kept the secret.”

“Wow. So, she didn’t practice magic? Ever?”

A look flashes over Lena’s face too quickly for Kara to decipher. “I didn’t say that.”

Kara manages to restrain her questions this time. The thing is, Lena looks like she’d answer them -- like she’s braced to endure something _awful_ , mouth set and eyes hard. And no answer she could give Kara is worth her looking like that. 

Besides, Kara can guess. She’s sat with enough Slytherins during study sessions with her sister and heard the hypothetical Dark Arts debates, the hot topics about whether or not making only three curses Unforgivable was a necessary measure, or just forced wizards who’d use them to get more creative.

She’s only spoken with Lena for what, fifteen, twenty minutes? Already she can’t think of another person who’d react more negatively to finding their natural perception, their ability to depend on reason and logic, might have been messed with. For years. 

So: “Thank you,” she says, instead of further asking Lena to open up her rib cage and offer a vulnerable heart to Kara’s curiosity. “For telling me, I mean. You didn’t have to do all this.”

Lena scoffs and pushes her hair behind her ears, but not before Kara sees relief cross her face. “I wasn’t _planning_ on it. I was going to avoid you for another three years, maybe report back on the strongest students from flashier Houses. It wouldn’t have been hard.”

“Oh. So... why..?”

“Because you wouldn’t leave me _alone_ ,” Lena bursts out. “Do you do this with all new transfers, or do you just have the worst instincts ever?”

“Hey,” Kara protests, but it’s a little guilty -- she didn’t think Lena would notice Kara checking in on her and asking around. Or even, once, “forgetting” a plate of Yorkshire puddings on the Ravenclaw table on her way across the hall an evening when Lena came down to dinner too late to claim her own. Kara knows she always takes seconds. 

“Hufflepuffs talk a big game about how they’re a house against grandstanding. But you just had to be special, huh,” Lena says, folding her arms. “Most people avoid the bitchy girl with a family history of genocidal leanings.”

“Oh.” It clicks the second before she opens her mouth: “And that helps you feel in control of things? Pushing people away?”

The only sign she scored a hit is how Lena’s arms tighten until her tie rucks up under her robes. “If I’d continued to avoid you, this whole thing would have gotten out of hand. I had no idea you’d find me here -- though I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, since you’ve practically _scent-marked_ me -- but I figured if I made the potion you’d throw yourself in my path. Eventually. Be honest: you’ve been planning some kind of intervention to save me from my hopelessly antisocial self.”

“Have not,” Kara mutters. Wondering if she can bribe her way into the Ravenclaw common room with the weirder kind of American candy doesn’t count. 

“Do you know what I see with this,” holding up another vial of scientiserum, “when you lie? It’s really gross.” 

“Okay, okay,” Kara amends. “But you were so _sad_.”

“I wasn’t.” The rosy cloud doesn’t change, and Kara doesn’t see anything super disgusting, so she must not be lying... but... “I’m fine on my own.” 

“Well, maybe I want to be friends, anyway.” 

Lena frowns, but doesn’t look too repulsed, so that must fly. 

Kara continues: “Maybe, beyond all the other stuff, I just... want you to be my friend.” 

This potion is really liberating. Kara’s tempted to carry around backup and press them on everyone she knows. She hates lying, anyway, and loathes the necessity of it in so much of her life. But she never anticipated the _intoxication_ of honesty. Getting to look this girl in the face and share anything, everything. Right from the start.

Or close enough.

“Why would you --”

“Because you’re amazing. You can do almost N.E.W.T..-level potions as a fifth year. You don’t let anyone scare you -- and Alex has been trying. And if my, um, hovering really annoyed you, don’t ask me to believe for a second you wouldn’t have pulled out your wand. So you must have appreciated _some_ of it.”

It’s not just the rosy cloud surrounding her, Kara thinks. Lena’s cheeks are definitely pink. 

“And you did this,” indicating the empty Potions classroom, the setup in front of the, the vials. “You did all of this just because you didn’t want your mom to... you seem like you’d be an amazing friend. From where I’m standing.” 

Lena ducks her head until her hair falls over her face. 

“Hey,” partially to break the tension, partially because... “Can I ask another question?”

Lena clears her throat but doesn’t look up. Nods.

“What did you mean, that first time we met? About cheating?” 

Lena is _definitely_ blushing, but to her credit she doesn’t let that keep her from meeting Kara’s eyes. “I just... you know.”

“I really don’t! That’s why I asked.”

Lena rolls her eyes a bit, looks to the side. “Two miraculous and supposed impossibilities. At the same time.”

Kara’s grin stretches so wide it almost hurts. “Yeah. Yeah, I definitely want to be friends.” 

Lena blinks, eyes focusing somewhere other than Kara’s face -- and Kara realizes she’s checking the, the aura or whatever, that the potion lets you see. Lena scrutinizes it for a long moment, as if expecting whatever the potion is showing to suddenly change its mind.

It doesn’t, of course, and so slowly, slowly, and still not quite looking Kara in the face, Lena smiles. 

  
  
  


**4.** It’s hard to find time over the rest of the year to hang out, what with O.W.L.s. They all share a cab ride to the airport – Kara, Lena, and a grumpy but reconciled Alex –and end up hugging for so long when they say goodbye they almost don’t catch their flights. They send owls to each other every day, sometimes twice a day. (They’d use their phones like any other teenagers, except for the secrecy statute.) Kara never feels the weeks of the break stretch out longer than the summer before sixth year. 

Coming back is a revelation. The moment she sees Lena waiting for her on the train platform is like finding her wand again for the second time, a zing of electricity through her blood that makes her fingertips tingle.

From that moment they’re joined at the hip. Lena gets better at talking to other students – Kara _makes_ her – but it’s the other they reach for to partner with on class assignments, to walk to Hogsmead, to grab an extra study session in the Restricted Section.

Okay, that last is supposed to be a secret.

“Calm down,” Lena mutters, passing her fingertips lightly over book spines as she searches the shelves. “You’re the reason Hufflepuff is outstripping everyone else for this year’s cup. So what if you lose them a few points by getting caught?”

“If the professors figure out how good I am at super-speeding past magical surveillance, I’m pretty sure they’ll do more than take away House points.”

Lena pauses. “You might be right.” She takes out her wand -- eight and a half inches of black walnut, with a core of dragon heartstring -- and whispers a spell. Kara shivers as it settles. Lena’s spells have the same velvet gentleness of a thestral’s nose nudging into her palm.

(She spooked the heck out of Alex the first time she described exactly what was pulling the carriages to Hogwarts. It was an awkward moment, realizing she was maybe the only student who _could_ see them, and for a few moments she dreaded she had begun her life in this new world in the absolute wrong way -- and possibly doomed herself to outsider status.

Except even if they couldn’t see them, the others appeared to know exactly what she was talking about. “My mother sees them,” an older boy from Gryffindor supplied. “Same with Needly’s two brothers,” another student in the carriage gave a short wave and a smile, “and Edgecome’s cousin. Mum was at the Ministry when Death Eaters took over. The rest were all at the Battle of Hogwarts. Almost everybody knew about the thestrals after the war. Who’d you lose?”

It’s not the moment Kara would have chosen to share her origins, but she can’t think to do anything except answer with the truth.

The Gryffindor boy’s eyes widened before he said, slowly: “It still takes Mum, sometimes, even though it’s been years. She says when that many people are lost, and so quickly, it feels like _you’re_ the one who’s not where you’re supposed to be.” He rummaged through his pockets before emerging with a packet of chocolate frogs. “She also says these help. Want one?”

Of course Kara wanted them. She also wanted whatever snacks the other students in the carriage felt like offering up in apology for raising a sensitive subject, even by accident. And while Kara braced herself for a humiliating show of pity, or some other fuss, every time she had to tell the story, most of the student body also had a family member or friend who had survived horrors. They knew the best response was acceptance. And maybe food.) 

Kara doesn’t recognize the spell Lena’s using, but that’s pretty normal. Lena knows a lot -- _a lot_ \-- of spells for secrecy and hiding and, well, subterfuge. Each of her letters to Kara over the summer had been written in a code that didn’t unscramble until Kara tapped her wand against the signature and whispered her Kryptonian name. And each of _Kara’s_ letters had been charmed into banality and sent out under a stranger’s signature.

“Who is ‘Sentra Hollyoak,’ anyway?” Kara asked her, bemused in the aftermath of Lena’s strict instructions just before they boarded different planes at the end of last year.

“Someone my mother won’t take any interest in,” Lena replied quietly. 

“Why do we care if she --”

“Kara,” Alex said, eyes on Lena’s face, “just use the fake name.” She and Lena exchanged a long look before giving a brief nod almost simultaneously. Alex didn’t complain about her friendship with Lena after that -- or, not out loud. She even allowed their prolonged hug with minimal grace.

Lena, Kara knows now, is like that when it comes to her mother. She won’t open her letters if anyone else is in the room, and the one time Lillian Luthor sent a howler Lena cast a silencing spell so absolute and so advanced it left every student in a two-meter radius completely deaf for the rest of the day. It also cost her fifty points from Ravenclaw. No one in her house minded after she offered to teach it to them. 

(Kara knows it wouldn’t have mattered if they _did_ mind. She’d seen Lena’s expression just before the howler ripped itself open, and watched from across the hall as the blood drained from Lena’s face at the rantings no one else could hear.) 

Kara sometimes wonders what it means that she likes being subject to Lena’s magic. Alex’s is like a hand ruffling through her hair, and most of the professors feel more like a persuasive presence than an actual touch. But Lena’s? Lena’s feels... good. Maybe a little too good -- when she brought it up in the common room she learned most people didn’t have visceral experiences of magic that changes from person to person. Best to keep it under wraps, then, how Lena’s magic feels like... like slipping into cool, smooth sheets after a tiring day of accomplishments; like the first warning curls of sunlight over the horizon when they’ve stayed up too late talking in the astronomy tower and the accompanying flush of shared chagrin; like the way Lena winds her arms around Kara’s neck when they super-speed, or fly, together. 

She just likes Lena. She’s not dumb, she knows what this is. Or, what it could be. She’s very careful not to push -- Lena is not worth losing for any reason, and still skittish about friendships and other people in general. If she made any at Beauxbatons she never mentions it, or even sends letters. She has the respect of her fellow housemates and even the sympathy of a few others in the student body with relatives who fought on the wrong side of the last Wizarding War. She’s not an outcast. 

But Kara is her only real friend, and not for lack of Kara trying to change that. Lena is so... Lena is _amazing._ She’s smart, of course, and _so funny_ , making little asides and observations under her breath in their classes that have Kara muffling laughter that one day will get them both caught. And Lena pays attention in the most wonderful way: the barest hint of a frown between her eyebrows betraying just how hard she always tries to understand, to decipher. Kara will say something idly on the way from Charms to Transfiguration and Lena will not only remember it, she’ll have planned an entire outing to Hogsmead around it a whole three weeks later. Kara has never felt so selfish in her life as in being Lena’s only friend. More people deserve to know how wonderful she is, and she deserves their knowing. 

“Henry Sweeney is going to ask you to Madam Puddifoot’s next weekend,” Kara blurts out, and wants to kick herself. It’s the truth -- just because Lena doesn’t make friends, it doesn’t deter admirers -- but she’s not supposed to be passing along gossip. Or at the very least, she’s not supposed to care.

Lena gives a soft snort without looking up from her book. “Optimistic of him.”

Kara has to agree he’s skipping a few steps. But she gets it: Lena’s whole _thing_ , her stand-offishness and mystery, makes those who want to approach her feel like they have to impress her. Even if they’re right, Kara’s not sure what would do the trick. Lena doesn’t impress easily. 

Kara, on the other hand... “You could go, and bring me back those gooseberry jam tarts.” 

“Go yourself. That chaser on the Gryffindor team would take you. What’s her name? The one who keeps giving you pumpkin bread from their table.”

“Cindy Cartwright? They get _sultanas_ in their bread at Gryffindor, and Cindy used to be friends with Alex, so --”

“What about that seventh year who asked you to go flying with him? Or that shopgirl at Magic Neep who gives you a discount? Or, I don’t know, any one of the two or three dozen people at this school who think they’re in love with you?” 

Kara blinks at her. “Hey,” she says, deliberately mild. Lena doesn’t use that tone. Not with her.

Lena turns a page with such energy the paper almost snaps free of the spine. “I’m just saying. Plenty of people will treat you to tarts -- or anything you want -- if you let them. Don’t think you have to waste another afternoon in Ceridwen’s or Dogweed to keep me company. Or that I need you to set me up.” 

She breaks out in prickles like this, sometimes, all cutting retorts and spiky attitude. If she’s trying to drive people away, though, it only makes Kara want to do the opposite -- want to scooch closer and wrap Lena up and soothe her, tell her she’s safe, and she doesn’t have to keep testing to make sure. 

“Dogweed isn’t so bad,” Kara says instead, after a pause.

“Last time something in there made you break out in blue hives.”

“Yeah. Then you spent all your pocket money in Honeydukes to make it up to me.” Kara puts that extra sunny shine into her smile. “And you still owe me an hour in Zonko’s to boot.” 

Lena scowls at the reminder.

“No backing out.” Kara has been looking forward to it all week. She’s not even going to buy anything -- she just wants to see Lena endure it, gritting her teeth the entire time. “You promised! The potion Pomfrey gave me for those hives was _disgusting_.”

“Whatever.” Lena returns her attention to the book. “I’d still choose you and Zonko’s over Sweeney and Puddington’s.”

“Well, yeah. I’m a real catch. As you’ve noticed.” 

Lena doesn’t look up, although Kara is pretty sure she’s rolling her eyes. If she’s being honest with herself, Kara is grateful for the fact that Lena doesn’t seem to be that interested in boys _or_ girls, or anything that isn’t the latest cauldron model. Crushing on her best friend is bad, but it could be worse. Lena could be taken. 

“But seriously: dozens of people aren’t in love with me.” She hears Lena scoff. “They aren’t! That’s just how people are when you’re _friendly_ , Lena.” She hesitates. “Not that you have to be. And I’m sorry if I made you think... I’d rather be with you, too. I don’t know why I brought it up.” Kara leans back, propping her elbows up on the edge of a shelf. “Half our year is paired up at this point.”

“Mmm.” Lena doesn’t look up from the book, except to make notes on her pad.

Kara takes the opportunity to look at her for as long as she likes. She has to be careful – a third year from Gryffindor made a joke about how often she ends up mooning at Lena, and now everyone teases when they catch her. The only person who hasn’t said anything about it is Lena. Kara’s not sure if that’s a good thing, or… “Don’t you ever want to be part of a twosome?” She tries to make it a joke, nudging at Lena with her shoe. 

“No more than I already am.”

That makes Kara pause. But there’s nothing in Lena’s face or voice to give her a clue. She said the words like she was reciting ingredients: simply stating what is.

“Do you,” she starts, barely allowing herself to hope, “I mean, do you ever think about..?”

Except when Kara looks a little closer she sees the slightest hint of Lena’s defenses being up: the tension in her shoulders and mouth she only gets when someone asks about her family. But never – _never_ – with Kara. Not since that first time. 

“Do I what?”

“... nevermind.” 

Lena finds what she needs, and they sneak back to safety, only parting ways when curfew is about to strike. They always hug as they say goodbye, as though the wait they have to endure before reuniting in tomorrow’s class is more than just a night’s sleep and the morning meal. 

The only class they don’t share is Divination. Lena was very firm on that point. “Magic, fine,” she said, almost savagely. “But _prophecy_? I hear she reads tea leaves.” 

“Exactly! Think of all the extra tea breaks we’ll get in a week. Think of the _biscuits_.”

But Lena was resolute. She signed up for Astronomy instead, and they spend the warmer nights of the year up in the tower with a pile of snacks. When it gets dark enough they lie on their backs and Lena traces out the constellations in the heavens above. If Kara hears a dorm check or footsteps approaching she speeds them both back into bed. Mostly, though, they fall asleep on the blanket they carry up there, tucked into each other’s angles.

Kara thinks Trelawney’s okay. She’s kooky, sure, but there isn’t a mean bone in her body. And the first time Kara sat in one of her classes Trelawney put both hands on either side of her face and said: “A star may go out, child, but I can still see its light in your eyes.” 

  
  
  


**5.** Seventh year they run away together into the Forbidden Forest.

Kara met the centaurs third year, when they noticed her flying over the trees some nights. They waved her down one evening and she descended, sure she’d get in trouble for breaking curfew (and she wasn’t supposed to, but sometimes she _needed_ to, stifling the urge felt like trying to breathe with only half her lung capacity). They surprised her by being much more interested in her nature, her family, the knowledge of her people. 

“You, you... Kryptonian,” their leader said, arms folded beneath proudly bared breasts, “you look like humans. But I think you are a little more tolerable. Tell the Headmistress you will be the new liason between us, and we will not punish you for trespassing through our territory.” 

It worked out better than anyone expected. Kara wasn’t put off by their fierceness -- what could they do, back kick her into the pond? well they could, but it wouldn’t _hurt_ \-- and they had a grudging appreciation for her grasp of scientific and mathematical concepts even the wizarding world has yet to conquer. She doesn’t share their long lives, but having lost so much and so many, well, it put them in the general realm of shared perspective. And it helps to be among them, be reminded that she’s not the only non-human with a place in this magical world. Faced with regular evidence that “unlike” does not mean lesser, or unwanted. 

Taking Lena to them is a decision she makes in the moment. 

Seventh year has been hard. Especially in contrast to the summer before. Her internship at St. Mungo’s was one of the hardest, most demanding handful of weeks of her life -- but _amazing_. Getting to help people every day... And the growing excitement from the staff as they realized her dedication, her intention to use her magic together with her abilities in this way, the possibilities that might open up... And she would be part of a team. She held onto that thought like a talisman every time she felt overwhelmed by the future she was carving out for herself. She wouldn’t be alone, forced to make every hard call and bear the weight of every consequence she couldn’t have seen coming -- she could help people, but there would be a legion of healers serving as partners and mentors to help _her_. It was everything she ever wanted. 

Or, it was close. And what it didn’t cover, Lena seemed determined to make up in what little free time Kara had. There wasn’t much, but that didn’t stop Lena from filling it: sneaking off to champagne afternoon teas, strolling the endless halls at the National Gallery, sitting down to a fry-up after a punishing late-night shift. 

Lena had something keeping her in London that summer as well, but nothing she would talk about. All Kara knew was that it was in Knockturn Alley, it had been arranged by her mother, and that if Kara ever tried to find out what it was Lena would know and she would ghost her for the rest of summer. 

It had been sufficient threat to make Kara be good. And she knew Lena didn’t make such ultimatums lightly -- the other girl was anxious all summer, twitching anytime the two of them went anywhere near the wizarding sections of London. In the end it was easier to comply, and besides, it wasn’t like there wasn’t enough fun to be had in the muggle parts of the city. 

She said as much to Lena. They were both going home for a few weeks to recharge before seventh year, and while Kara missed Eliza and Alex _badly_ , part of her didn’t want to go. 

“This was the best summer of my life,” she said, her head on Lena’s shoulder. They were spending their last day in London using up their Oyster cards riding the buses. They were on a double-decker, feet up in the front row as they watched the city roll out before them. Muggle London is a lot grubbier than its wizarding counterpart, with none of the impossible architecture that lends Diagon Alley its charm. But it feels wide open and almost like wild territory -- just the two of them in a world of unknowns. 

“Good,” Lena said. She’d sounded... tired. Which Kara should have paid attention to.

She should have been paying attention to a lot of things.

Once they’re back at school... it’s not like fifth year. Lena isn’t avoiding her, or hiding in her books. But she’s _sad_. She’s so sad, and it’s like there’s some kind of magic at work, because Kara feels like she’s the only one who can see it. She’s the only one that can tell Lena is performing every smile, every perfect answer in class. 

But every time she tries to press Lena about the other girl looks right through her.

She feels them drifting apart, slow and inexorable like the drip of days off the calendar bringing them closer to the end of the year. And once school is over... over for _real_...

N.E.W.T.s are just over a month away, now, and almost all the seventh years have divided up into pairs or groups at this point in the year with the hopes of helping each other survive. The lines of territory are crossed in times of need, however, and there’s usually a new face or three at their library table each night hoping Lena can help them unravel whatever Potions problem is particularly tangled to their brain. 

“Or they’re here for you,” Lena came back with when Kara pointed this out, hoping to get a smile that didn’t make Kara want to fly up high enough the clouds started to thin out and scream her frustration. “And your Charms notes.” She made a big show of sighing and shaking her head. “Poor Professor Goldstein.”

Which was mean, because Lena hadn’t even been _around_ fourth year, when in the lead-up to O.W.L.s their Charms professor had found out his only student from that class who could remove the enchantment from a bewitched object without his help was planning for a career in applied medicine. He hadn’t _fought_ with Pomfrey about it, exactly, but anyone walking past her office that afternoon heard raised voices and lamentations about “possibly the purest talent of this generation, and you think she should spent the next ten, twenty years on endless repetitions of _anapneo_ and _episkey_ ” and retorts of “old enough to be a Hogwarts professor, but not too old to earn a detention laundering the infirmary linens.” Professor Goldstein hadn’t ever brought it up to Kara directly, but sometimes in class he would talk about the educational opportunities available beyond seventh year, to those students whose ability and interest allowed them to investigate the very foundation of magic... and he would direct a wistful stare about three inches over Kara’s head. 

For whatever reason, more and more people have been showing up regularly to what used to be their party of two in the library. Which means Lena has been putting more and more people between them -- slowly, stealthily, like she thinks Kara won’t notice if it’s _gradual_. Like Kara won’t look up one evening and realize Lena is trying to place them on opposite shores of a metaphorical ocean, drop by drop. 

And that makes Kara incredibly angry.

She doesn’t even remember the last time she was this angry. Most of the time it doesn’t feel like there’s any real room in her life for it. First she had to learn to be human, and then a wizard, and now an _adult_ , and she just... could she be angry? Sure. She can think of reasons to be angry every day. 

But anger has the tendency to blot out everything else, to stain it, like a quill loaded up with too much ink. She loves her cousin and she doesn’t want to lose him, despite everything. She loves Eliza and Alex, and it’s not _their_ fault. The people whose fault it is -- the ones who set her adrift -- well, she loves them too. Of course. She’d rather feel love than lose herself in anger.

Lena, though. Kara’s a little shocked to find she has _no problem_ being furious with Lena.

By this point breaking into Ravenclaw Tower is like breathing. Officially, she’s only breached the sanctity of the dorms -- but that’s because Lena insists on covering her eyes as they super-sped through the common room. (“You realize at these speeds if I make a mistake, you might die?” “And Ravenclaw’s secrets will die with me.”) She’s tempted, in this fury, to go through it now and flaunt it in Lena’s face. In the end she just floats right up to the window that looks into Lena’s room.

Her bed is empty. 

Kara comes back to the ground slowly. Huh. That’s... hmm.

Lena wouldn’t risk detention this close to exams -- it would cut into valuable studying time. She wouldn’t risk it unless...

Kara closes her eyes. It’s true that everyone’s heartbeat sounds a little bit differing: in rhythm, in smoothness, even the reverberation in the chest cavity. It’s easy to focus her attention on Hogwarts to find Lena’s.

The rate at which it’s currently going makes Kara put that extra oomph into her speed as she flings herself towards the Potions classroom. Where she finds Lena standing over a shallow, dusty cauldron that looks like she pulled it from the depths of storage. Or -- Kara squints, ignoring Lena’s surprised gasp as she comes into view -- not a cauldron. A basin of some sort? Or a...

“Is that a _pensieve_?” she blurts out. Lena goes rigid, which is all the answer she needs. 

Superspeed gives her too much momentum, so when she rushes over to knock Lena’s wand out of her hand it’s with enough force to bruise. She’s sorry, but she’ll heal Lena later. 

Or, she thinks, as she sees the long, sticky strand of memory that floats from the air into the shallow container, maybe she won’t.

“What were you doing with that.” Her voice is too flat to make it a question. She knows. They both know. “Lena. What memory was that?”

Lena grips her wrist with her other hand and presses her lips together. 

“Okay. Fine.” The pensieve is a quarter full of shifting, silvery stuff. “You won’t tell me? Fine.” She takes out her own wand and stabs it directly into the mess, and the world _wooshes_ away so quickly she can only just make out Lena crying out for her to stop.

The world comes back into focus with another _woosh_ \-- except this isn’t the world, not really. This is Lena’s memory.

And it’s a memory of _her_.

It’s -- it’s her in fifth year, she’s wearing the pink and yellow Converses that wore out that summer with her robes. She’s doing... something at the Hufflepuff table, something involving standing on the bench with the breadbasket help up over her head as Cornelia Crull, who’d only been a first year, tries to leap up and bat it from her hands. Cornelia is grinning, though, and so is she. Kara doesn’t remember what stupid game they were playing, and everyone at or near Hufflepuff is laughing too hard for her to hear anything that’s being said. 

“That’s Kara Danvers,” she hears, and turns to see Eric Van der Durgen leaning across the Ravenclaw table to talk to Lena. “She’s American, like you. But she’s popular.”

Kara wants to shout _hey_ at him, because she’s been around enough Ravenclaws now to understand how they insult people. But her eyes snag on Lena instead -- wow, she’d really forgotten what Lena used to be like, so stiff and cold, with an expression of _begone, peasants_ at all times. She almost can’t blame Van der Durgen for wanting to rile her a bit, except Van der Durgen always was and always will be a jerk. 

“She seems American,” Lena replies, still watching over her shoulder. Kara wants to _hey_ at her, too -- they’ve had this argument before, four years of French boarding school doesn’t make _Lena_ Frenchier. But when Van der Durgen smirks and turns to his seatmate, there’s a flash of something else in Lena’s face: a split second of longing so strong Kara almost gasps, has to turn around and check to see that yes, Lena is still looking at her. 

The world _ruffles_ weirdly -- and Kara thinks, these memories must be linked in Lena’s mind, and one comes after the other as naturally as turning pages in a book. 

They’re in the courtyard, this time. Kara finds herself standing beside memory-Lena under the eaves of the open hallway that encircles the space. Fifth year Lena -- now with her familiar scarf and, oh, that last memory must have been the Sorting Feast -- is curled up on the low wall, back against a pillar. She has a book open in her lap but she’s not reading. She’s doing a very good _impression_ of reading, flicking the pages at regular intervals and keeping her head bowed, but it’s an impression Kara knows very well at this point. When Lena’s truly absorbed in a book you can toss a second book at her head and she won’t even look up. (Then, if you were an alien that had only just realized what a dork your new best friend was, you could superspeed to catch it before it hit her, apologizing, only to get a distracted “...hmm?” in response.) 

This Lena looks up every ten to fifteen seconds, like someone aware they should be stealthy but not doing a very good job of it, eyes flicking over to the center of the courtyard, where seventh year-Alex and fifth year-Kara are playing their favorite game: Alex practicing the martial arts she took classes in over summers, Kara pretending she can’t fight back and instead enjoying being thrown over Alex’s hip, landing on the ground with a whoop of joy. 

“You don’t really want to make friends with the Danvers sisters,” someone says, and now-Kara jumps a little -- but it’s just Van der Durgen again, robe open and standing with his hands in his pockets. And _leering_ at Lena like... Kara knew there was a reason she’d never liked that kid.

Then-Lena looks over at him with a bored expression. “Because you know me so well.”

“I know your family,” he says, and leans his shoulder against the opposite pillar. “Trust me, they’re not the kind of girls a Luthor heir wants to hang out with.” He smiles. Not nicely. “ _My_ family, on the other hand...”

“Ah, cronyism.” Lena’s lip curls. “So much for Hogwarts’ famed egalitarian atmosphere.”

Kara is kind of angry at now-Lena, she’s still aware Lena was doing something she won’t like, even if she still isn’t sure _what_. But in this moment all she wants to do is sweep then-Lena into her arms and cuddle the life out of her. She’s so... Kara really doesn’t remember her being like this, _this_ brittle, _this_ sharp, a permanent groove between her eyebrows like absolutely nothing she sees pleases her. Two years really can’t be long enough to forget this kind of misery, can it? 

... or was Lena ever this miserable when Kara was around to see it?

“No, seriously,” Eric says, leaning in close. “I’m not a blood purist, but I draw the line when someone isn’t even human. That’s just rational, don’t you think?”

Kara barely has time to notice the frown deepening on Lena’s face, because she can see Alex’s head come up with a quickness. Kara used to tease her that she could hear someone being crappy at fifty paces. 

“Hey, Van der Durgen,” Alex calls out, leaving then-Kara sprawled on the ground and calling out dramatically to her friends for ‘one last chance to say goodbye,’ and walking over, hands already clenching into fists. “Keep my sister’s name out of your mealy little mouth. Got it?” 

Eric blusters and Alex gives some kind of rebuttal, but Kara isn’t paying attention. She’s watching Lena watch her then-self, disaffected attitude all but falling away as then-Kara comes closer, calling for Alex to leave it, it’s not important. As then-Kara nears Lena almost, but doesn’t _quite_ scramble off the wall and onto her feet, hugging her book to to chest. She even draws her chin in a little, hair falling over the side of her face like a dark curtain.

If Kara didn’t know better, she’d say Lena is acting _shy_.

“No, Van der Durgen, you want to say something, _say something_.” Alex climbs over the wall to put herself in the open corridor with them, removing any obstacle to a full-on charge. Then-Kara leans over to grab the back of her sweater, but her feet stays on the grass as she cajoles her sister to _come on, we only have a couple minutes until next class, anyway_. She doesn’t spare a glance for Eric. Or Lena.

It’s a little hard for Kara to watch. She knows -- she _remembers_ \-- how hard she used to work to keep Alex out of these skirmishes, but it’s hard to encompass (even as she watches it play out) how Lena was once shut out of that circle of focus, relegated to background noise and a student like any other. She wants to shout at herself, wave her hands and point to Lena, motioning _pay attention to this over here_ , _too_.

“If you wanted to keep it a secret that she’s, that she’s an _alien_ , it’s a little too late,” Eric is saying, shrill and obviously half on the retreat but trying to hide it. Lena’s eyes go wide where she’s still tucked against the pillar. 

“It doesn’t have to be a secret to be none of your business,” Alex growls, and Eric breaks, turning and walking away from them as fast as possible, robe flapping around his ankles. 

“So, that was a great way to start the new term,” then-Kara says, letting go of Alex. “How many points do you plan on losing for Slytherin _this_ year?”

Alex says something, and the both laugh. Kara isn’t paying attention anymore -- she’s watching Lena, who is still watching her then-self. She looks like she’s holding her breath, the air around her almost vibrating with anticipation. 

Except, even as Kara watches, Lena’s face falls a little, anticipation giving way to disappointment as she must realize that then-Kara is not going to look her way.

Lena firms her mouth and lifts her head up high. _That_ , Kara remembers, and suddenly she knows when this memory is from.

“You’re an alien _and_ a wizard?” Lena asks, and it’s only this time around that Kara hears how close her voice is to shaking. “Isn’t that cheating?”

And finally -- _finally_ \-- then-Kara turns and looks at her. Their eyes meet, and Lena’s cheeks flush slightly in triumph.

“That’s more than enough,” Lena -- the real Lena -- says as she takes Kara’s elbow. The world _wooshes_ in reverse and they’re back in the potions room, where Lena drops her arm like it’s a hot coal. 

Kara blinks at her. “You... you liked me.”

Lena’s mouth thins and she steps away. Her wand is back in her hand -- retrieving it and the memory was probably why she left Kara on her own in the pensieve for as long as she did. “I didn’t even know you. Then.”

“Yeah. But you wanted to.” 

“I told you,” she says shortly, “my mother --”

“Nooo,” Kara interrupts, holding up a finger, “before that.” She can feel the smile growing on her face, but she can’t help it, she feels like a string or a tie that’s been constricting her for the last two years was finally cut. “ _Before_ you found out I was an alien. Not because of it.” She’s outright beaming at this point. “You wanted my attention.” 

“Well, I had no idea you would _fixate_ ,” Lena snaps, but the bright red spots on her cheeks mean Kara can’t even be irritated. 

Lena has almost always wanted to get to know her. To maybe be her friend. 

What she was or Lena’s family -- that all came later. It slowed things _down_ , instead of putting them in motion.

It lets her be gentle when she asks: “Lena, what the heck are you doing?” 

Lena crumples, mouth trembling until she presses her whole hand to it. “I shouldn’t have let this happen,” she whispers against her fingers. “I knew my mother would... I _knew_ it would put you in danger, I knew you were the one she was after almost right away, I should have... I _should_ have...”

She has never seen Lena upset like this: not mad, she’s seen that a bunch, but so _upset_ it looks like it’s unraveling her at the seams. It throws her, and it takes a moment for her to piece together the fragments of distress and figure out: “... you mean, you never should have been friends with me? Yeah, that was going to happen eventually anyway, no use beating yourself up over it.”

“Not if I’d stayed out of your way. If I hadn’t --”

“It was _always going to happen_ , Lena.” She takes the other girl’s hands. Partially for the excuse to touch her, partially to make sure she didn’t try something like actually running away before Kara could make her believe -- “We were inevitable, okay? Either you’d find me, or I’d find you -- it didn’t matter, because it was always going to happen.” 

Lena doesn’t tug out of her grasp, but she doesn’t return it, either. And the look in her eyes doesn’t lose any of that bleak desolation. 

“What _were_ you doing?” Kara asks again, hoping against hope --

“Trying to reverse-engineer a memory charm,” Lena says dully. “That’s how I figured out scientiserum -- doing something with magic, and then using that process to experiment and find a way to do the opposite.”

Kara quashes the urge to yell at her that experimenting with potions, while not _great_ , is very different from poking around and playing with the _human brain_. She’s too busy trying to work out: “You wanted a charm to... prevent someone from examining extracted memories?”

“To make a memory look like something it's not. You can’t forcibly remove someone else’s memories, anyway. But I can only stall her for so many years, and once we graduate...”

Kara frowns. “Yeah, but... I mean, not to make you freak out, but aren’t you forgetting _legilimens_?”

Lena gives her a small smile. “I’ve been able to defend against that spell since I was thirteen.” 

Kara feels cold, hollowed out -- that one fact stripping away any pretenses she might have retained about Lena’s home life.

About how little Kara has done to help her.

The fact she is, apparently, a terrible friend will have to wait. 

“Okay, you’re not doing that,” she says, barreling on when Lena opens her mouth with a clear intention to protest: “No, listen. Memory charms are _so_ hard, and _so_ dangerous, and I don’t care what happens to me --”

“I do,” Lena whispers.

“-- if the alternative is you getting _hurt_. _Lena_.” She resists the urge to shake the other girl. “We have to find a solution to this together. You can’t do this on your own.”

“It was my mistake. It’s my responsibility.”

Kara sucks in a deep breath, holds it, and counts to ten. It doesn’t actually strain at her lungs, but it’s been a good way since she was a kid to trick her muscles into remembering to chill out, unclench, to not spring into superspeed and lock Lena in one of those Slytherin dungeons Kara is really not supposed to know about. “I’ll make a deal with you,” she says, when she feels calm enough not to scream. “Come with me and -- and _talk_ to someone, someone who might know what we can do about your mom. Tell them the whole truth. And if that doesn’t work -- if even _they_ can’t see a way out of this...” She squares her shoulders. “I’ll make the memory charm.”

Lena frowns, her dark eyebrows in bold strokes and angles against her pale face. “No you won’t.”

“I will. Mine’ll be better, too, you know you crib all my Charms work.” Kara steps in closer, bringing their joined hands up and then pressing them against her sternum. “Lena, I swear to you. On the souls of my parents. This isn’t a trick, I really will do it.”

Lena’s eyes are huge. “You would do that for me? If I asked you to?”

“To keep you from doing something stupid? Anything,” Kara rasps out. Her throat feels like sandpaper, but she means it.

Lena frees one of her hands, and Kara has a bad moment where she thinks she failed, Lena is going to brush her off and _say_ she’ll drop it but then she won’t really and oh Rao what is Kara going to do if Lena really gets hurt --

But Lena only touches her fingers to the side of Kara’s face, eyes huge and wondering. Like that day in the potions lab. 

“No professors,” she says, low, like confessing a sin. “She might go after them next.” 

“Okay,” Kara says. Lena drops her hand, and Kara wants to snatch it up and press it back to her cheek, but -- “I wasn’t thinking of any of them, anyway.”

“And we have to do it soon.”

“Yeah. Right now.”

* * *

Lena does not like the centaurs, Kara can tell.

She’s less sure on how the centaurs feel. They’re harder to read.

“Thank you for, um, receiving us so late,” Kara begins, even though she knew they’d be up -- they told her many times how important it was to take advantage of clear nights for their stargazing, especially in a place like Scotland. Centaur life apparently involves a lot of late mornings, which Kara felt was totally valid. “It’s kind of an emergency.”

“It’s a mistake,” Lena mutters. Kara squeezes her hand a little tighter. 

“We did not give you free rein in our territory to serve your whims, Kryptonian,” the leader says. Kara doesn’t know their name -- any of their names. She’s not sure how to do this in the absence of friendly introductions. They don’t like her, exactly, they just prefer her to --

“And we definitely didn’t allow you to bring... humans,” the leader said with a sneer. 

“I know, I’m sorry,” Kara says, heart beating fast. Superspeeding here didn’t take any real effort, but this has to work. She’s out of options, otherwise. So it _has_ to. “I just -- I need to ask a favor from you. If you think I’ve earned one, or if you can tell me how to pay you back in future. Whichever it is, I really need this. Please.”

The leader frowns. “You are formally asking us for a boon? In recognition of your service thus far?”

Kara distantly registers Lena trying to lean in close and whisper that centaur favors are a _big deal_ and they have a lot of influence, she could actually do something _useful_ with this instead of wasting it on -- “Yes,” she says, a little too loudly, hoping Lena takes the hint. 

Lena does not. “You better not be asking them to --”

“Would you please prophesize for us,” Kara says, ignoring how Lena _yanks_ on their joined hands. “Lena thinks we have to,” _break up,_ no, wait, “separate, that she’s putting me in danger if we stay together. But I can’t...” Her throat tightens and she fights past it, forcing out the words past sudden panic and certainty: “I don’t _want_ this life if she isn’t in it. I’d rather go live with the Muggles and forget the wizarding world ever existed.” 

Lena’s hand tightens on hers to the point where she thinks it would hurt, if those kinds of things hurt her. “You love magic,” Lena says roughly. “You _love_ \-- all of this, you love the spells and the creatures and you would never give it up, not for --”

“For you I would.” Kara grabs her other hand. “I’d go hide with Muggles if it means you don’t have to be afraid of your mom, I’d break my wand, and... or if you abandon me, I swear, Lena, I’ll do it. Everything magic is just going to remind me of you, anyway. And what’s the point of it, if it can’t fix this? I’m not going to lose anyone else just for some stupid spells.”

“I’m the one who hates magic, not you.” Lena is frowning so hard, Kara wonders if she’s really hearing what’s being said. “Kara, don’t say things you don’t mean, because this isn’t going to work. I told you, I don’t believe in divination, you can’t convince me that superstition is a good reason to --”

The centaur leader clears their throat. Loudly.

Kara and Lena both look up, startled. They’ve managed to draw a bit of a crowd in the last few minutes -- mostly annoyed-looking adults, but there are a few centaurs who look both closer to adolescence and mildly thrilled at the spectacle Kara and Lena are putting on. One in particular is leaning their cheek into their hand, elbow propped up on a boulder, and watching with utter absorption. It’s the same expression Kara has seen whenever the Hufflepuffs group into the common room to watch the latest installment of whatever dramatic teen serial they’re hooked on. 

Lena tugs at her hold, but Kara is pretty sure it’s just an embarrassed reflex. She steps in closer and loops her arm around Lena’s waist to make sure -- and Lena doesn’t fight, actually leans into the embrace. So. Yeah. Kara was right. 

That one centaur teenager sighs happily.

“Our work is foretelling, not fortune-telling,” the leader says in a frosty tone. “And it is certainly not _magic_.”

Kara isn’t in a position to see Lena’s frown, standing this tucked into each other, but she can basically feel it. “I... I beg your pardon, I don’t mean to be rude. But you look at the stars and think they tell you the future. Right? Magic is the only way --”

The leader’s nostrils flare. “Magic,” crisp, “is a very simple and basic pursuit. Hence the human ability to master it. What we study is so complex, so sensitive, it only appears as magic to those lacking in perceptive abilities. Like yourself.”

Lena’s shoulders are still tense, so Kara bends her head to put her mouth to her ear. “There’s, um, this idea because space-time exists in four dimensions, and humans -- but apparently not centaurs, or at least not always -- only _experience_ it linearly --”

“I know the theory of tenseless time, thank you,” Lena says. It’s a bit snippy, but she’s willing to cut Lena some slack considering what a long night this has been. And Kara’s happier with each passing second as the tension leaks from Lena’s frame, faced with the presence of her beloved science. 

“Alright,” she says after a second. “I’ll listen. But,” with that touch of stubbornness, because Lena doesn’t go down without a fight and, oh, Kara loves her so much, “I would think it’s beneath the dignity of your work, looking at what’s best for a couple of teenage girls.”

“That’s true,” the leader says, and Kara’s heart sinks, “or it would be, if you two were just that. As it stands, we’ve been following both of your stars for some time now.”

There’s dead silence in the clearing. “Wait,” Kara says. “What?”

Now the leader frowns at _her_. “The planets are our infinite study. You are a visitor from another planet. Did you believe these facts to be unconnected?”

“What about me?” Lena asks. Her hands are around Kara’s waist, now, fingers knotting into her robes. “I’m very much from this planet. Why would you --”

The look the leader levels at her cuts her off without a word. Lena knows exactly why anyone connected to the wizarding world would be interested in her... for lack of a better word, fate. They all do. 

“So, wait, what do they say?” Kara asks. “Our stars, I mean.”

The leader sighs. “I recommend you both return to your school. The help you need comes from your own kind -- and your own headmistress.” 

Well, Kara knows when she’s been dismissed. And this is what she wanted from the beginning, really, so she’s already mid-turn before Lena’s hold on her tightens and she freezes in place, more out of habit than from actual restraint. 

“I...” Lena has to close her mouth and swallow, and Kara can feel her almost vibrating with -- “I’m sorry about what I said before, and I believe you. I do. If I could just... I know we’ve intruded on you horribly. If it’s not too much to ask...”

Kara might say the leader’s expression softens, but it’s not... _really_... what happens. Not quite. 

But as the leader meets Lena’s imploring eyes, their voice is considerably less strident. “Not many people have a destiny of meaning, Lena Luthor. Even fewer people share that destiny with another. There is no severing that link. Your only choice,” their voice deepening with import, “is in deciding what kind of destiny you want it to be.” 

Lena lets out a long, shuddering sigh. “Thank you,” she whispers. The leader nods, once, and Kara puts an arm around Lena’s shoulders to lead her a polite distance away before they begin to superspeed back to campus.

On the way out of the clearing that teenage centaur catches Kara’s eye and, checking to make sure the leading isn’t looking in their direction, shoots her a double thumbs up. 

Kara returns the gesture before they’re completely swallowed by shadows.

  
  
  
  
  
  


**5 and 3/4**. “What I _ought_ to do is suspend you both,” McGonagall says. 

It would carry a lot more weight if she hadn’t already forced them to sit in the squashiest chairs in her office, as well as plied them with biscuits. Kara just kept the tin in her lap and eaten from it as Lena explained... everything. 

A couple of biscuits went down the wrong way during that lengthy process. Kara knew Lillian Luthor was awful. She _guessed_ at a lot of the stuff that went down in that household. But the whole truth, it turned out, was beyond anything she could have come up with on her own.

It was something to contemplate as she nibbles in silence. (Not even these revealed horrors are worth handing back free food. Besides, she decides, tonight was _exhausting,_ and she needs the sugar.) 

“You’re not going to?” Lena asks now, and she sounds legitimately surprised.

McGonagall sighs and adjusts her reading glasses on her nose. They’d woken her up, of course. She’s wrapped up tight in a thick green robe, quilted cotton and very dignified, but Kara can just about catch something frilly poking out from under the cuffs of her sleeves. “Miss Luthor. I realize you have not spent three full years with us here at Hogwarts. But believe me when I say our legacy is not one of turning away those in need.” She peers at them both over the tortoiseshell rims. “Especially anyone who seeks refuge from very dark, and very dangerous magic.”

This hits Lena like a punch -- Kara sees it. Her eyes go wide, and she turns first a kind of blotchy red and then very pale. She lets out a long, shuddering breath and almost whispers: “I... I’m sorry. I should have come to you before.” She swallow. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, I just -- I wasn’t sure you would believe me.”

McGonagall doesn’t look insulted, though. A little sad perhaps. “Yes,” she murmurs. “It’s been my experience that those in your situation often struggle with where to turn, or who to trust. It is not a fault on your part, Miss Luthor. Merely a lesson you must continue to study, just as others must learn how to be more active in proving themselves worthy of your confidence.”

From the way the headmistress folds her lips together, Kara is pretty sure that last is McGonagall reflecting on her own actions. Doesn’t keep Kara from feeling a pang.

“Now,” the headmistress resumes briskly, “as suspension would only be counter-intuitive to our aims, we shall have to fashion some other suitable punishment for breaking school rules. I believe twenty-five inches on human-centaur relations from Miss Danvers” -- Kara groans around a biscuit -- “and three hours every Saturday and Sunday spent assisting Madam Pince in the library over the next eight weekends, for Miss Luthor, should serve the purpose.”

Lena isn’t fazed by the handing down of her punishment. “And my mother?”

“Will not be informed of your detention or the reason for it. You will finish out your final year at Hogwarts and, I can only assume, pass your N.E.W.T.s with flying colors. And then,” McGonagall raises her eyebrows, “you will be seen boarding the train and disembarking at King’s Cross Station -- but there will be no reports of you beyond that. Or at least, not until you feel prepared to face your mother and any of her cohorts.”

“But... where will I go?”

Unthinking, Kara reaches for her. Lena grabs her hand without looking away from McGonagall.

“Go?” the headmistress asks. “Nowhere. You won’t ever leave Hogwarts in the first place -- even the figure on the train will be an apparition. Your mother will discover that eventually, I suppose, but she will lose valuable time investigating other possibilities. And even then, the protection and limiting spells on these grounds will ensure your safety until you choose, of your own free will, to go beyond them.” 

“But otherwise she’ll be trapped,” Kara blurts out. “It’ll be the same as if she were a prisoner. She won’t be able to go anywhere, or...”

_Or be with me._

“Kara.” 

She looks over at Lena softly speaking her name. The other girl smiles, gives her hand a brief squeeze. “I don’t mind. Really. I think I’d rather be here than anywhere else, anyway. The headmistress is right -- it’s the safest place I’ve been.

“And,” with another squeeze, “it’s not too far from where you’ll be at Mungo’s. You can come see me whenever you like.”

She’s right, and yet.

And yet.

_(“Your only choice is in deciding what kind of destiny you want it to be.”)_

Kara takes a deep breath. “Headmistress -- can I ask for refuge, too?”

“What?” Lena jerks at her hand, but Kara keeps her eyes on McGonagall. Who frowns at her.

“It only makes sense,” Kara persists. “If Lillian Luthor and whoever else is looking for me, shouldn’t I get protection?”

“You’ll have that at St Mungo’s. Of all places -- a hospital staffed with people experienced in adverse magic? You’ll be fine.” Lena’s viselike grip on her hand belies the coolness of her tone. _  
  
_

“The protection spells are even better here, though, aren’t they?” Kara keeps her eyes on the headmistress.

“Kara, don’t.” She can see the sharp swing of Lena’s hair falling over her shoulder as she leans in as close as her squashy chair allows. “Don’t be... you don’t need to do this, some kind of self-sacrificing for no _reason_ \--”

“Um, I think wanting to stay out of your mom’s way is totally a good reason?” Kara retorts, finally turning her head. “Plus keeping an eye on _you_ , ditto, plus... plus maybe I can do an independent study with Professor Goldstein. St Mungo’s isn’t going anywhere, and this way I really get to know all my options. _You’re_ the one who’s always telling me I should consider higher Charms work --”

“Ladies,” McGonagall breaks in with a tone of voice which, although courteous in the utmost, somehow also manages to remind them of the extremely late hour, “this is all very fascinating and, I’m sure, worth the discussion. However, I believe it can be conducted without my input. Miss Luthor,” turning her head, “you have the promise of any and all resources at my disposal, so long as you ask for the sanctuary of Hogwarts. Miss Danvers,” with a slight pause, “I won’t comment on any future decisions that are yours to make. However, I can assure you that Anthony Goldstein will probably do backflips if you decide to further your studies with him. So who am I to deny either of you.” 

Kara can’t help a quick, triumphant grin, even as Lena attempts to cut off all the blood to her fingers with a look like a burgeoning stormcloud. McGonagall sighs and, casting a pointed glance at their joined hands: “Now, if you girls will excuse me. I believe there are a few hours of rest available until the morning bell.”

Kara hands back the biscuit tin. She didn’t touch the ones with green jelly in the center, which means the tin makes a respectable rattle of non-emptiness when McGonagall lifts her eyebrows and gives it a shake. Still, best not to press her luck, so she drags Lena out of the headmistress’s office while throwing their apologies and gratitude over her shoulder.

“ _Americans_ ,” she hears McGonagall mutter after the door clicks shut behind them.

“Come on,” she says as Lena opens her mouth, “let’s not do this in front of the portraits.”

* * *

That removes both their common room from the equation, and it might be a good thing -- if Lena is going to shout, maybe it’s best to leave other, innocent students out of earshot. But there a couple of corners in the library where they can have real privacy. And, Kara figures, if Lena is going to be Pince’s assistant on the weekends, they’re totally allowed to be there after hours.

She sits Lena down on one of the ancient couches, both hands gingerly placed on her shoulders. Lena’s been silent in a way that raises the hair on the back of Kara’s neck since the headmistress's office, save a small snort of... something... when Kara opened up the library with a charm to put the alarm spells back to sleep. 

“Okay,” she says once Lena is seated, hands lingering. “Now you can yell.”

Lena gives her a searing look, crossing her arms. “I won’t yell.”

“Uh huh.” Kara pulls herself away to sit cross-legged on the floor so they can face each other, and braces herself. 

“I just think it’s _funny_ ,” and it’s true, the pitch of Lena’s voice is quite at -- “that your urge to _throw yourself_ upon any kind of bomb, literal or otherwise, that threatens your friends could actually lead you to throw _away_ your _entire future_ \--” 

Aaand there it is. Kara winces and holds up her hands in surrender before holding a finger to her lips. Lena subsides, ducking her head so that her hair hides her face. 

“You can’t do this for me,” she says, low and choked.

“I’m not, really.” Kara leans back on her hands. “I know it looks like that. But Lena -- this is for _me_. I don’t want to go to London and start building my whole life without you.”

“It’s only a few months. A year, at most.”

“Okay, we both know that’s not true. You wouldn’t be this scared of your mom if you thought you only needed a few extra months to deal with her. You might be here for _years_. And how long can I keep coming back to Hogwarts every weekend without anyone suspecting something? Lillian’s going to hear from someone we’re best friends eventually, and I know you, you’ll do something stupid because you think it’ll keep me safe --”

“Oh, _I’ll_ do something stupid?” Lena doesn’t raise her head, but her tone is reassuringly waspish. Kara was really beginning to wonder if Lena felt as truly defeated as she was acting, but -- nah.

“-- and I’ll do something crazy because of how much I miss you, and we’ll end up making everything worse if we’re not careful to stick _together_. Weren’t you listening to the centaurs?” She takes a deep breath. “I promise, if things go wrong with Professor Goldstein or if I start to really miss healing, I’ll try something else. Being unhappy is not the point. But we need time to figure out what to do next, and this is how we get it.” 

“This is my mess, Kara. You should let me deal with it.”

“I mean, it’s kind of my mess, too.” That brings Lena’s head up as she stares, and Kara shrugs. “I had almost two whole years to make you tell me how bad things were with your mom, and I didn’t. I let you go home to her every summer and I never asked the right questions, I let you brush me off -- I wasn’t a good friend. That means this is just as much my mess.”

Lena’s whole body slumps in disbelief. “Are you... you are the _textbook definition_ of an amazing friend. You’re always blowing other people off to be with me, even when I’m horrible, and I didn’t _want_ to talk about it. I -- I was scared, I needed the time and space to feel safe, and you gave me that. I put _you_ in danger by being selfish --”

“You’re only horrible _when_ you’re scared,” Kara breaks in, feeling her shoulders bunch up with outrage. Yes, the person badmouthing her best friend is, well, her best friend. Still not okay. “I would rather be with you, anyway. And -- alright, I get what you’re saying about space. But I could have done more. I could have let you know how much I would be there for you, if you needed it,” Kara says, clenching her fists. “You were dealing with all of this on your own. I should have at least asked you to tell me everything. I should have made you be _honest_ \--”

Lena leans down and kisses her.

It’s not like Kara hasn’t pictured it. It’s _Lena_ , and there are only so many extra biscuits Kara can sneak in Divination before Trelawney’s urge to “quiet contemplation” lead her mind to wander. But it wasn't something she really dwelt on, because... it’s Lena. Her best friend. 

Absolutely no guilty daydreams, or even the half-remembered dreams during sleep that made her flush suddenly as Lena peered closer and asked what was wrong, came close to the reality of Lena’s mouth on hers, the shock of soft lips and how her hair slips over her shoulder when she bends down to fall across Kara’s face. Kara reaches up to push it back, unthinking, and Lena takes her raised arm as an invitation to climb into them. She slides down off the couch and into Kara’s lap, bent knees on either side of her thighs, pressing in so close Kara has to grab at the floor to keep them from unbalancing. 

Except as soon as she can she’s righting herself and grabbing at Lena, because -- _wow_. And she thought Lena’s _magic_ felt good? It’s nothing compared to: Lena’s weight across her lap, the curve of Lena’s spine as Kara drags her hands down her back, being so close she can hear the blood rushing in Lena’s veins. Kara shifts instinctively, pressing in her thigh, and Lena makes a _noise_ that shreds Kara like paper. If she could pin Lena down and coax that noise out of her for the rest of her life, she’d consider it well spent.

Her own heart is beating loud in her ears, and her breathing is ragged. At the same time, though, she feels so calm -- as if, for once, she is exactly where she should be, with the person she needs most. 

It’s because they spent so long getting here, she decides, a little distantly -- most of her attention is focused on the feeling of Lena’s skin as she brings her hands up to the other girl’s face, how _incredibly_ _good_ it feels when Lena shifts forward, slotting them together like puzzle pieces as her hands tangle in Kara’s hair. That’s why this is so easy. After everything else -- everything else they fought about, or promised -- this part feels as natural as relief of letting out a long-held breath.

She can feel the moment Lena’s brain catches up with what her mouth -- and the rest of her -- is doing. Lena stiffens just the slightest bit, her hands loosening. She doesn’t stop kissing Kara, but when Kara’s teeth catch her lip, she hesitates.

_Oh, no_ , _no way,_ Kara thinks. She pushes Lena back until she’s up against the foot of the couch, her hands on Lena’s hips anchoring her in place as she deepens the kiss. 

“Point taken,” Lena says, when she angles her face to the side. She’s breathing hard but she’s smiling. “I -- okay, _okay_ ,” outright laughing, and catching Kara’s hands where they’re beginning to creep into her robes. “I _agree,_ but I’m not doing this here.”

Kara only had the most nebulous idea of what “this” they were doing -- she was just enjoying herself -- but this snaps intent into focus, leaving her a little dry-mouthed. “Oh,” she says, heart thudding in her ears. “Um. When would you be up for... doing this?”

Something in her expression makes Lena giggle uncontrollably. Kara might be offended (A little bit. The _littlest_ bit.) except she hasn’t seen Lena laugh like this since... and also, Lena is turning kinda pink. Which is so cute, Kara can barely pull herself together. 

She did that. She made Lena look and sound and feel like that. 

The smile that stretches out her mouth is so big, so irrepressible, that it’s embarrassing even for her. She tries to hide it as best she can be leaning her forehead against Lena’s temples. “Hey,” she says, taking in the feeling of Lena pressed up against her, the sound of her heart beating fast, “no pressure, or anything. I just think you should know I’m super in love with you.” 

Lena’s breath catches, and her hands come off Kara’s biceps so she can throw her arms around Kara’s neck. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t need to -- not right now. Kara appreciates how scared she is, still, how it might take a little longer for her to speak things aloud, terrified that just putting it into words might tempt fate. But she holds onto Kara so tight it’s almost uncomfortable, and pulls her in so close Kara can see the tears dampening her lashes. 

“So... do I make a reservation at Madam Puddifoot’s?” Kara says, deliberately breaking the tension.

It works, thankfully, and Lena laughs. If it starts out a little hysterical before she relaxes again, and if she has to look away for a second and wipe her eye, they can both pretend those things don’t happen. “It’s good you know what kind of girl I am,” she says. “Library makeouts aside, I won’t put out for less.” 

“Gotcha,” Kara says, schooling her face into seriousness. “Snuggles in here until your detention is over.”

Lena’s lips twitch into a grin. “And then what?”

“Then I’ll take you to Puddifoot’s, but I’m not sharing any of those gooseberry tarts.” Lena laughs because she thinks it’s a joke. Which is cute. Naive, but cute. “And then,” pressing a quick kiss to Lena’s mouth because she _can_ , because Lena is going to be her girlfriend and life is _amazing_ , “we figure out how to save the world.” 

Lena chases after mouth, which is distracting, and Kara’s head is in a completely different place when Lena draws back from this kiss with: “We’ll be just be hiding for a while, though. I think that only counts as saving ourselves.”

See, this is why Lena needs her around -- for perspective. “Someday you’ll see,” Kara promises her, “that it’s the same thing.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which I am that one centaur teenager. 
> 
> Happy light in dark days to all. ❤️
> 
> (yes I am aware I essentially wrote another destiny/soulmates story LEAVE ME ALONE I LIKE WHAT I LIKE)


End file.
